Naive, lovestruck teen or cold-hearted killer? Jurors given very different portrayals of 13-year-old girl

MEDICINE HAT - The grisly trial of a 13-year-old girl accused of slaughtering a local family concluded Friday with lawyers from each side battling for the hearts and minds of jurors, who will begin deliberating her fate on Monday.

Two very divergent portrayals of the girl emerged Friday -- one of a cold-hearted teenage killer and the other a naive young girl swept off her feet by an older man and unwittingly dragged into a murder that he committed.

During final arguments in the case, the Crown told jurors the girl's account in the triple slaying of a mother and father along with their young son, was unbelievable.

The prosecutor contends the girl's jailhouse love letters to her much older boyfriend after their arrests show nothing to suggest angst that a family was brutally killed in their home.

By contrast, the defence tried to convince the jury that the young girl -- just 12 when the stabbing deaths occurred -- was captivated by the older man and her actions driven by fear of him.

The girl maintains she had no part in planning the killings of the family, only that her co-accused Jeremy Allan Steinke killed them and then ordered her to kill their eight-year-old son.

Crown prosecutor Stephanie Cleary said the evidence, however, indicates otherwise.

"There is no expression of remorse or concern other than concern for him," Cleary told the jury Friday.

During the trial, a blood splatter expert offered a contrary opinion to the girl's explanation on the stand that she stabbed the boy "not very hard," before Steinke allegedly delivered the fatal slash to his throat.

The expert testified the boy was stabbed in the hallway outside of his bedroom first.

"This tale is unbelievable. You cannot rely on it," Cleary said, referring to the girl's testimony in her closing argument that took less than an hour.

"It makes no sense, not because she's 12, but because it is not true."

By contrast, the girl's defence lawyer contended there was no plan for the couple to murder the family because Steinke abandoned the girl at the house, leaving without her.

"There was no plan. This wasn't an agreement," lawyer Tim Foster told the jury.

Cleary countered his argument, saying: "It doesn't have to be a good plan, it doesn't have to be a sophisticated plan to be a plan for a murder."

The girl's late-night phone call to Steinke the night of the murders to vent her anger about the family was simply to let Steinke know it was time to activate their plan, Cleary said.

"The telephone call speaks volumes."

The girl's defence lawyer said her morbid talk was only venting, and that the killings were a "tragic misunderstanding," between her and Steinke.

The girl, who has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, did not plan the killings, Foster told the jury.

She was only 12 years old and in love with Steinke, he said.

Foster told the seven-man, five-woman jury that even though the girl spoke and wrote about wishing the family would die, there was no plan on her part to participate in their murders.

The girl and her friends often talked darkly about death, but it was just part of their alternative culture, he said.

Rather, it was a "coked up" Steinke who was raging after watching the violent movie Natural Born Killers who snuck into the Medicine Hat house in the middle of the night on April 23, 2006, and killed them all.

"Why didn't they know where they were going to go afterwards?" asked Foster, describing how the couple arrived unexpectedly at a drug dealer's house after dawn.

"Why spend the day at a party house with people coming and going?" he said. "Why introduce her? Why let people see you together?"

Cleary described the killings as "savage."

The father was stabbed 24 times and fought for his life. The mother also bled to death from 12 stab wounds. The black-handled fillet knife used to kill them was found buckled in the middle and bent like a hook at the tip. The boy had four stab wounds and his throat sliced open.

"If there was a plan, why doesn't he take her with him? Why does he leave her there?" Foster said, explaining how Steinke left the girl alone in the gore-filled house.

Cleary, however, suggested when the girl asked Steinke "are you just going to leave me . . . ?" her tone was not frantic, but petulant.

Why would she insist he take her with him, Cleary asked.

Foster insisted the girl was in a state of shock, unable to stop Steinke or call for help because she was "spaced out." Cleary wondered how the girl thought to write her boyfriend's address down so she wouldn't forget it, order a taxi, steal her mother's purse, run to an instant teller machine, and make small talk with the cabbie shortly after the killings.

"Why steal the purse if you don't need it to further your plan?" she questioned.

Steinke's footprints were found in the upstairs bathroom and a towel and pillow were found covering a pool of blood in the little boy's bedroom.

The girl mentioned nothing about that in her testimony. She said Steinke handed her the knife and left.

"He had to have been in the bathroom," Cleary said. "The footprints don't lie."

She said the evidence indicates the girl rinsed the knife and her hands in the bathroom by herself.

"These are not the actions of a zombie."

The girl was too frightened of Steinke to try to stop him or call for help, Foster said.

The girl testified the boy left claw marks on her forearms because she squeezed his neck in the crook of her arm, trying to get him to go to sleep so he wouldn't hear the horrible sounds of his parents' slaughter.

Six love letters the two exchanged while in police custody also paint a much different picture how the 12-year-old perceived their partnership in the crimes, Cleary said.

She accepted Steinke's marriage proposal and wrote "we're legends," and "we should have run away."

Foster said the girl was honest about having sex with Steinke, including two hours after the killings. The two were seen giggling and kissing at a party house less than a kilometre away from the crime scene that day.

"This was a 12-year-old girl in a sexual relationship with a 23-year-old man. She doesn't even say to you he forced me into it or he manipulated me. She says she loved him and he loved me," he said.

"How would you expect someone to act?"

Steinke is also charged with three counts of first-degree murder. He has not yet entered a plea, and is back in court this month.

Justice Scott Brooker will charge the jury Monday morning. They will be sequestered until they reach a verdict.

The girl is believed to be the youngest person in Canadian history to face three counts of first-degree murder.

szickefoose@theherald.canwest.com

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Naive, lovestruck teen or cold-hearted killer? Jurors given very different portrayals of 13-year-old girl

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